


92 degrees in the shade

by Eddaic



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Domesticity, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, mature themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 06:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12575952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eddaic/pseuds/Eddaic
Summary: McCoy seems taken aback. "Are you saying I can stay there?""I am saying I will stay there with you."





	92 degrees in the shade

**Author's Note:**

> In the beginning of this fic, McCoy is visiting Vulcan to spend some time with Spock. Takes place after _The Voyage Home_.
> 
> Again, because _Star Trek: TOS_ is episodic, I do not consider it to have a ‘timeline’, and so here ‘Spectre of the Gun’ happens before ‘Mirror, Mirror’.
> 
> I have taken the idea of mushi (though they are not called that here) from Yuki Urushibara's _Mushishi_. Much of her work is based on Japanese folklore, and some on random ideas she had. Mushi are difficult to define. The wikia page says:
> 
> ‘Mushi, also known as Midorimono ("green thing"), have been described as "life in its purest form". They are seemingly magical creatures […] and most of them depend upon either forest or human life in order to live; this is why they are considered a form of parasite.’
> 
> Title from _Written on the Body_ by Jeanette Winterson.

**92 degrees in the shade**

"I lost my shadow."

Spock blinks at him. The air currents might have hindered his hearing. Or perhaps McCoy had employed a human idiom. "Pardon me?"

"Look down, man."

Intrigued, Spock does, and his eyebrows rise. Despite the beams of Vulcan's sun slanting through the window, there is, quite literally, no shadow attached to McCoy's feet.

***

It rained last night, and the sky is red.

Spock sits on the edge of McCoy's divan. (The doctor had agreed reluctantly, during his visit to Vulcan after Jim was demoted to captain, to occupy one of the guest rooms in Sarek and Amanda’s house.) McCoy is curled up, sleeping, and his skin is pallid, but that could be an effect of the morning light. After a moment's hesitation, Spock gently shakes him.

McCoy blinks and hauls himself up, rubbing his eyes. The bed sheet pools around his waist, and below his navel there are wisps of dark curls like the strokes of a charcoal sketch. Spock thinks he should be embarrassed, but he has been inside McCoy's head, has shared a body with him.

"I spoke with T'Lar," Spock says.

McCoy looks at him blearily.

"I had, of course, heard fables in my youth of such spirits, but – "

"You sayin' I'm possessed?"

"I would not use that term," says Spock. "In Standard, the creature can be roughly translated to 'sand insect', though it is not actually an insect." He steeples his fingers. "It nests in memories, withers away your identity. You will find your energy dropping, and you may begin to forget things, though that is said to come later. The creature is parasitic, but it is not malevolent; it merely exists in the only way it knows how."

McCoy cocks his head to the side in that barely polite manner that one reserves when entertaining a rather mad idea. “Doesn’t explain why I don’t have a shadow.”

"It is, you might say, a side effect. I reiterate that while this being physically exists, it operates on a supernatural plane, so to speak. A physician cannot do as much for you as a priestess. Delay the memory loss, perhaps, but that is all."

McCoy grunts, shifts so he is hugging his knees. His collarbones jut, and Spock wonders if he has always been this thin. "Malevolent or not, I'd like to get rid of it."

"Fortunately, I can attempt to do so right now." Spock turns so he is looking at McCoy properly. "It will require a few mind-melds. The creature will leave once it feels an alien presence. I am no priest, but I am among the best Vulcan telepaths. If I fail, you can consult T’Lar." He stops talking because McCoy has gone rigid. "Doctor?"

"No," says McCoy, eyes wide and determined.

"Your breathing and heart-rate are elevated. Have I said something to upset you?"

McCoy wags his mouth, and at length licks his lips in that anxious way of his and says, "I don't want a mind-meld. I refuse."

"Is there any particular reason?" Spock says, frowning at the illogicality. Even McCoy’s emotionalism only goes so far.

McCoy is leaning away from Spock now, his body coiled, as if ready to spring away. "None that you need to know of."

Spock does not understand. Still, he cannot force McCoy, much as it would be beneficial for McCoy to yield to rationality. He says, "In that case, you can speak with a physician at the hospital."

***

McCoy says he does not want to bother Spock's parents, so Spock tells him about the modest house he owns at the edge of ShiKahr. Old-fashioned, no computer, not even a thermostat. Quiet and airy, which is what he likes and McCoy needs.

McCoy seems taken aback. "Are you saying I can stay there?"

"I am saying I will stay there with you."

There is a bed, big enough for one person and frayed at the edges, tucked in a corner beneath a window. After beating the dust out, Spock makes McCoy take it and buys a sleeping bag for himself.

***

McCoy turns out to be a surprisingly decent cook. He shies away from elaborate recipes, but what things he makes are flavourful: beans, lentils, stir fries, various soups. Spices are available in plenty and he delights in experimenting, though he takes little food himself.

The first time he eats one of McCoy’s meals, Spock clears his plate, hardly pausing to speak, while McCoy watches him from across the table with a kind of childlike eagerness, like he is happy to feed him. "It is not logical to waste food."

"Of course, Mister Spock."

When Spock tries to cook, McCoy shakes his head. "You're letting me live here. It's only right that I do a few chores."

"You are ill.  And unlike you, I am familiar with the ingredients used in this region."

"Spock." McCoy massages the space between his brows. "Just let me have this."

So McCoy cooks and Spock washes the dishes. On the first day McCoy helps with sweeping the house as well and has to stop every minute and pant, dabbing sweat from his face with the collar of his tunic, so Spock forbids him from cleaning.

"You're not my mother."

"It is my house."

McCoy shuts up.

***

Early one morning Spock finds that they are out of milk, and then remembers that McCoy takes it with cereal at sporadic intervals. McCoy will not wake for another hour at least, so Spock wraps a scarf around his head and steps out into the dry heat to go to the market.

On the way back, he realises that it had been unforgivably illogical to visit the grocery store to purchase one item. No vegetables, no medicine, no sanitiser. He had only been thinking of how McCoy likes milk with his cereal. Chastising himself for his foolishness, he continues down the road.

***

“I want to go out.”

Spock looks up from his PADD.

“I’m sick of being indoors,” McCoy says, sucking a small chunk of fruit off his fork, his gaze lowered. He has barely touched his plate. When he reaches for his water the lamplight hits his hand and Spock sees that his skin is papery, almost translucent. “It’s been twelve days.” McCoy has stayed inside the house thus far, too weak to move around much.

Spock would prefer it if McCoy sat in bed and ate the nutritious food the physician had subscribed, but he knows that arguing is pointless when McCoy has made up his mind. Resigned, he puts out the incense that had been burning on the table – the creature is said to dislike it – and says, “Humans make illogical decisions.”

McCoy does not reply.

They stroll through the city, the streetlights flickering on as the sun sets. McCoy shivers even through his jacket, his mouth obscured by the burgundy scarf Spock had given him. They reach a marketplace and McCoy keeps flitting between stalls, poking his nose into jars and picking up earthenware bowls and earning dirty looks from the shopkeepers. Spock has an abrupt urge to use one or a few of Jim’s colourful metaphors on them, but keeps his peace.

When McCoy halts to catch his breath, his throat raspy, Spock leads him to a teashop that he and his mother frequented often in his youth. It is lit dimly with lanterns, which is suitable, because McCoy has grown sensitive to bright lights.

They sit on flat cobalt pillows on the floor in a corner and sip their tea. Spock pushes their plate of biscuits towards McCoy, but McCoy grimaces. He looks out of place, with his Terran clothes and funny rounded ears. Spock wonders if he is homesick, and then remembers that McCoy has not been to Georgia for a very long time.

“This tea is…” McCoy swallows thickly, coughs into his fist. “This tea is interesting. What’s it made of?”

“The bark of an evergreen tree that grows in the hills. You use a similar substance on Earth.”

“Cinnamon.” McCoy blows on his tea, takes another sip. “This is earthier. Not as sweet.” When he adjusts his scarf to loosen it, Spock can just make out the sharp tendons in his neck.

“You must eat something.”

“I can’t.”

“I insist.” A pause. “It is considered rude here to not finish what is served.” It is true for most cultures that Spock knows of.

McCoy looks pained, and then reaches for a biscuit.

Later, at home, he stumbles to the toilet and throws up.

***

“Spock, where is my PADD?”

“You kept it in the table drawer 2.34 hours ago.”

“Huh.”

Spock tells himself humans have poor short-term memory.

***

His curiosity gets the better of him (he  _is_  a scientist) and he ends up asking McCoy why he does not want a mind-meld. "It is the only cure," he says, as kindly as he can, not wishing to rattle McCoy.

McCoy does not speak for 5.7 seconds, sitting cross-legged on the bed. His delicately pointed elbows rest on his knees, and his hand strokes his chin. He cuts an eerie figure, the absence of his shadow giving an impression of him not really existing. At length he says, "I don't want to talk about it." He pauses. "It will take several sessions, right?"

"At least four," Spock confirms. "The synapses in the brain must be repaired."

McCoy furrows his brow. He says, "I'll take the meld. Not now, but I will." When Spock arches an eyebrow, McCoy carries on, “I’m just…not ready. I don’t think I will be.” He picks at the bedcover. "I suppose it doesn't matter."

***

“It’s odd,” says McCoy, “to be a doctor and not have any idea what’s happening to you.” Despite his haggard face, his eyes gleam. “I feel pretty useless.”

“It is no fault of yours,” Spock says. “This creature is not well-documented. It exists mostly in stories, and Vulcans have ‘studied’ it from those. What scant medical records that existed about it over the past eight hundred years were written off as fable – two were burned by logic extremists.”

“A sore loss,” McCoy says without a trace of irony.

Spock leans back in his chair. “It is only in the past half century that medical studies have begun to take it seriously. And even then, few physicians are interested in studying it.”

“Tell me, Spock.” McCoy is clad in the light Vulcan robes Spock purchased last week, more suitable for this weather than his Terran garb. He does not carry them with Amanda’s easy grace. “Where is the line between natural and supernatural? Do things stop being supernatural when we understand them?”

Since his illness, McCoy has spoken lowly, almost in a whisper; his voice is soothing, smooth like the lacquer on a sword hilt. Spock had caught snatches of it during their five-year mission, in moments of peace, and had wanted to hear more of it.

“I do not have the answers to such questions.” Spock has studied them, meditated upon them, and come up blank. There are too many things he does not know. He finds the thought invigorating rather than unsettling.

“Well, at least I lived long enough to hear that,” McCoy says with a grin.

Spock is displeased with the wording, and talks without thinking. “You will not die, Leonard.”

McCoy looks sharply at him. “That’s the first time you’ve used my name,” he says. “It’s always ‘Doctor McCoy’ with you.” He does not sound bitter or accusing – merely curious.

“Do you wish to be called by your given name?”

“I don’t know,” says McCoy. “No one’s called me Leonard in years.”

“Leonard,” Spock says to himself. “Leonard.” He is aware he pronounces it differently to McCoy, without that peculiar American drawl. (He cannot tell the difference between Jim and McCoy’s accents – both are inelegant and somewhat irritating.) When he speaks it there are three syllables, Le-o-nard, not the quick Le-nard that rolls off McCoy’s tongue.

There is a sound and Spock looks up to find McCoy in a fit of silent giggles, clapping his hands and rocking back and forth. “I can’t believe,” McCoy wheezes, “you just talked to yourself.”

Spock decides he likes the way McCoy laughs; Vulcans do not laugh, and even Terrans tend to cover their mouths when they do. But McCoy has always been unashamedly, incorrigibly human.

***

The next time they go for a walk, Spock notices the stares, the gazes drawn to the sunny ground where McCoy’s shadow should be. McCoy scowls and mutters something about people minding their own business.

“I believe we might be intriguing some unpleasant citizens,” says Spock.

“Let them think.”

“They will talk.”

“Let them talk.”

“They might…” It is like chewing on rocks to say. “Try to evict you.”

McCoy turns to him, incredulous. “Why, what have I done?”

“You are an alien. You do not have a shadow. Some people may suspect you are an intruder, or a danger.”

“What are they gonna do?” McCoy says, challenge in his tone. “I thought Vulcans were non-violent.”

At Spock’s school, there would at times be dead beetles buried in his lunchbox, hands tugging at his ears to see if they were prosthetic. Essays written on why half-breeds were inferior, bound to fail, sent to his PADD. Technically, not violent.

“Perhaps we should utilise emptier and more ill-lit paths,” Spock says, and realises belatedly that he had said ‘we’ instead of ‘you’.

***

A week later he finds McCoy slouched at the edge of the bed, his fist against his mouth, staring at a chit of paper. “Doctor?” he says, alarmed.

McCoy looks at him. “I forgot my name.” He glances back down at the paper, seeming dazed, as if partly dreaming. “I had to write it down.”

Spock straightens and says, “I suggest we conduct a mind-meld now.”

McCoy pales. His hand does not move from his lips.

“ _Doctor_.”

McCoy sits up, lifting his head. His jaw is tight, as if he is expecting a blow to the cheek.

Spock sits next to McCoy. He lifts his hand and McCoy closes his eyes. Spock pauses. “It will not hurt.”

McCoy only clenches his jaw harder.

Spock would take that as a signal to proceed, but McCoy is clearly afraid (of what, Spock is uncertain – surely not of him), so he asks, “May I have your consent?”

“Get on with it,” McCoy says through gritted teeth.

Spock places his fingers on the psi-points on McCoy’s face. He speaks the customary words, submerges, and –

Totters. He experiences vertigo, as if he is falling through memories, not gliding through them, and makes a hard effort to stop the sensation. Once he does he realises McCoy’s mind has gaps in it, not merely as if it has been nested in, but as if it has been clean ripped through.

He aborts the meld, and when his eyes focus he finds McCoy swaying. There will be time enough for remorse later. “Did that hurt?” he says gravely.

McCoy nods, still apparently shaken.

Spock schools his expression into neutrality. “Have you ever had a mind-meld that I did not conduct?”

McCoy purses his lips, blinks. He shakes his head and says, “Yes. I suppose? I don’t know.”

“I must have concrete answers.” It is strange how concern can make one annoyed. Spock’s human half complicates things so.

“Yes.”

“Who conducted it?”

McCoy is silent.

“Doctor McCoy.”  _Leonard_ , he wants to say.

“The transporter malfunction.” McCoy’s eyes skitter over the floor. “The other universe. The one with the other Jim, and the other you.”

Spock is numb. He does not wish to hear what comes further, but this is for McCoy, so he must.

“The other Spock asked me for information. I didn’t give it to him.”

He does not need to say any more. Spock can connect the dots, complete the pattern. Bile rises in his throat and when he registers discomfort he looks down to find his nails have dug into his palms.

McCoy mumbles, “I suppose he was just…doing his job.”

“That is a filthy lie."

McCoy flinches and bows his head, and Spock is nearly overcome with guilt for not being more specific. “I meant,” says Spock, in a more controlled tone, “that he did not need to use a forced meld. No one was in danger.”

“They could have been,” says McCoy hollowly. “But he didn’t know that.”

Spock focuses on hard facts. “It is a crime under Vulcan law,” he says. “It was formerly punishable by death if committed against a person who was not trained to use mental shields. Now, it is a life sentence. Even against someone with strong psychic capacities, it is punishable by two to seventy years in prison.”

“Not over there.”

Enough time has been wasted. “I must fix the tears in your mind as well as the damage done by the insect.”

McCoy presses his knuckles into his eyes. It is ineffective in staunching the tears, and Spock watches, helpless, as McCoy swabs at his face, first with his fingers, then with the front of his robe. “I’m sorry,” McCoy says.

“You do not have to apologise.”

“I’ve ruined the clothes you bought.”

“The clothes do not matter.”

“I’m sorry.”

Spock takes hold of McCoy’s wrists. He has held them before, in more dire circumstances, but it seems new now, as if he is feeling the bone and sinew for the first time.

McCoy takes deep, shuddering breaths, but before Spock can worry that he is experiencing a panic attack, he shuts his eyes tightly, and when he opens them again, he is calm, or at least reigning in his emotions. His shoulders tremble, just a bit. “Try it again.”

Spock feels a sudden tenderness for McCoy. It is overwhelming, like the breaking of a dam, and he has to shove it aside so he can concentrate on helping. “There will be some pain.” He dislikes saying it.

“Anything’s better than this.”

Spock puts a respectful distance between them. “I will perform the meld now.”

When it finishes, McCoy tips forward and Spock catches him, holds him against his chest before laying him down on the bed. Whatever Spock is feeling is replaced by relief when he realises that, below McCoy’s body, there is a sliver of shadow, just enough for this angle.

***

Spock could not help being aware of the memories and bundles of emotion that were pelted at him in McCoy’s head, but they are not his business and it would be dishonest and cruel to think of them. He sits down in the living room, dims the lights, meditates with a concentration that borders on the ferocious.

It is difficult. There are only snatches of blankness. Spock gives up and makes himself tea and cannot drink it. The images stay, painted across his mind. Jocelyn telling McCoy she had been seeing another man. Killing (McCoy’s word) his father. His mother not speaking to him. The forced meld, searing and knife-like. (And Spock boggles at how McCoy did not go insane with the agony, with the aftereffects.)

Shame, reflexive, about everything.

More than these, there is a sensation of absence, of things  _not_  being there. (Joanna, always.)

There are happy thoughts too, light like champagne bubbles. Again, Joanna – it seems she underscores the majority of McCoy’s thoughts. Practicing medicine (and really, McCoy thinks of medicine as much as Spock thinks of logic). Medicine this and medicine that. That boy broke a wrist, poor fool, must get that bone-knitter. This lieutenant is so ill, unlucky darling, better give her some pills.

There is Jim, and himself. (Spock wonders if Jim is so radiant and he himself so infallible, so brave). Warmth and fondness and irrational pride. Few words here. A careful avoidance of the term  _love_.

Spock had known this before, through McCoy’s own actions.

It is different to feel it. Dizzying.

He makes himself stop. His stomach seems to have twisted itself into a knot, so he drains the rest of the tea down the kitchen sink.

***

The day after the melds end, McCoy says, "I'll move out." He shuffles his feet. "Thank you." Since the healing process began he has not talked to Spock outside of necessary communication, things like ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘please’. This morning he had left for a walk and when he returned his hair was windblown and glittering with sand because he had not taken a scarf. He had told Spock to eat without him and then stepped into the shower.

Spock cannot make him remain here, so he keeps silent. He idly thinks of all the things he has gotten used to. Milk in the fridge. Jars of that tea he is indifferent to but that McCoy drinks in the afternoons. Two towels on the rack in the bathroom, one white, one mint green, both immaculate in the way of Starfleet training.

Illogically, he dislikes the idea of only one towel in the bathroom the most.

***

That night, after they get into their beds and turn off the lights, Spock thinks of permutationscombinations of how to say he wants McCoy to stay. McCoy appreciates emotion, but that is not Spock’s manner. It would be logical to settle for a middle ground. He nods resolutely, opens his mouth, and, “I want to see your towel,” is what comes out.

Silence. Spock hopes McCoy is asleep and did not hear that. (His cheeks are not burning.)

“Are you awake?” McCoy says, voice flat.

Spock suddenly wants, as he has heard, to sink into the ground. “Illogical. I just spoke.”

“I thought you were sleep-talking.” There is a shuffle. McCoy must be turning on his side to face the wall instead of Spock. “What about my towel?”

 “I have,” Spock says, feeling as if his brain has disconnected from his tongue, “grown used to seeing it.”

“Are you saying you’ll miss me?” McCoy has said things like that before, over the years. Teasing. Self-deprecating. It sounds different now, direct, almost grim.

Spock wishes to banter – it is their way (it has always, Spock realises, been  _their_  way) – but he finds he cannot.

McCoy says, “What do you want?” and Spock wills his thoughts to dissipate. There are times when thinking is counter-productive (not logical, but true). At length he gets up and walks over to the low bed. McCoy pulls himself into a sitting position against the wall, looking at him expectantly. His hair is sticking up. Spock knows it is streaked with frost and looks sandy blond from a distance. He wants to push his fingers through it.

He clambers onto the bed and sits beside McCoy, drawing his knees up. They do not speak. When McCoy begins to shiver from the cold, Spock pulls up the blanket and tucks it around him. By the time the sky is the pale coral of dawn, McCoy is nodding, and Spock turns to press his lips against his temple. It is audacious, but McCoy, instead of growing angry, leans against Spock and dozes off.

Three point six hours later, Spock is interrupted in the kitchen when McCoy pads in barefoot.

“I’m supposed to do the cooking,” McCoy says softly. His eyes are puffy and there are dark smudges beneath them.

Spock looks down at the fruit he is dicing on the counter for their breakfast. There are a couple of toasts in the toaster and some hard cheese he has already sliced. “You were asleep.”

“You could have waited.”

“I did not want to.”

McCoy takes the knife from Spock and gently elbows him out of the way. Before he can begin on the fruit, Spock places a hand on his wrist. McCoy turns to look at him, putting down the knife, and Spock slips his arms around his waist. The kiss is light, feathery. It lingers. When it is over they rest their foreheads together, their gazes downcast.

“I thought you would hate me,” McCoy murmurs, “after all you saw.”

What comes to Spock’s mind on impulse (they have spent so many years bickering) is,  _Illogical. I do not feel hatred_. But really he wants to say, “I could never,” and so he says that.

McCoy leans his back against the counter and bright sunlight haloes him. Spock steps between McCoy’s legs, takes his face in his hands, reverent. He kisses his cheekbone, the corner of his lips, and runs his fingers through that hair, slightly awed that he is being allowed this. McCoy’s hand rises, flutters over Spock’s back, hesitant, or shy.

There is little more to do for breakfast. McCoy finishes cutting the fruit and they sit down at the kitchen table. When Spock is washing the plates, McCoy says from his seat, “Should I stay here?”

“Whatever you desire,” Spock says without pausing in his cleaning.

McCoy clears his throat. When he speaks his voice is subdued. “I guess I could head back to Georgia.”

“Adequate. The environment should suit me.” He turns to find McCoy staring at him. “Is something the matter?”

“Spock…”

“I will come with you.” He puts down the plate. “If it is what you wish.”

***

“Your mother will miss you.” McCoy is hunched over in his plastic chair, his elbows on his knees. He seems on the verge of wringing his hands. His eyes have a somewhat wild look, but Spock thinks it would be wise not to mention this. Outside, the civilian ship that will take them to Earth is being docked.

Spock says, “As I will miss her.” He had, in fact, requested her to visit them. She spends most days alone, as Sarek is still working, and it would be healthy for her to engage in human interaction. Moreover, McCoy enjoys her company and is a more gracious host than he lets on.

McCoy is still talking. “Your father won’t approve of this.”

“He has given up on disapproving of my decisions.”

“You could have a future at the Vulcan Science Academy.”

“I can send them articles from Earth.”

“I don’t know if I can make you happy.”

Spock turns off his PADD, faces McCoy. He says, “You already have.”

_-finis-_


End file.
